The NEW Build Your Own Arcade Controls
Main => Everything Else => Topic started by: menace on November 04, 2018, 07:16:47 am
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Not sure if this was posted before but back in the 90's I loved the hell out of this game ;D You'll have to read the sordid story for your self but in a nutshell, they licenced the property, only to have the licencee claim they now owned the property and were in fact the creators (or something like that). Anyways, I thought the game was certainly worth a small donation to help them defend themselves.
https://ca.gofundme.com/help-fred-amp-paul-save-the-universe (https://ca.gofundme.com/help-fred-amp-paul-save-the-universe)
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Is the other side of the story posted somewhere? I would be curious to know the the details of the bankruptcy and the bankruptcy auction. They might have sold off their rights to the property to get debt collectors off of their back.
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Stardock has an extensive post on their side of the story: https://www.stardock.com/games/starcontrol/article/487690/qa-regarding-star-control-and-paul-and-fred (https://www.stardock.com/games/starcontrol/article/487690/qa-regarding-star-control-and-paul-and-fred)
They state this re: their purchase of the Star Control IP:
Stardock paid over $300,000 for the Star Control IP which included the trademark and copyright to Star Control 3. The Star Control brand is, in our view, far more valuable than any copyrighted material within a 25 year old DOS game. Source code and alien art. Nothing else, as far as we can discern, falls under copyright protection. You can’t copyright “lore” or timelines, or alien names, or game designs or UI.
There's also a good write-up on the situation here: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/02/star-control-countersuit-aims-to-invalidate-stardocks-trademarks/ (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/02/star-control-countersuit-aims-to-invalidate-stardocks-trademarks/)
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I got SC Origins for free and it sucks. I guess Stardock had to bundle it with a graphics card purchase. Maybe it was designed for kids?
If I sell SC to Atari for $300,000.00 Atari owns the IP of SC. IF they sell the IP to another company (Stardock) then Stardock owns the IP, unless there was some mitigating clause that would revert to the creators of the original IP (me for this example) then I would have to discuss with Stardock my new idea for a SC game and work with them. Which would mean SC Origins would be a better game, make some serious reto cash, instead of going to court and making an expensive scene.
$300K is a lot of money for a game written for a 8088, and then dumped to the public domain. I paid $9.99 for my copy back in the day. No need to defend them.
I still have the protection code wheel for the game.